1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display shelf and a display shelf system suitable for displaying an article, and more particularly, related to a display shelf and a display shelf system for projecting a projector image luminous flux of information about an article to be displayed.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A display shelf is used widely in a retail shop, such as a supermarket, a convenience store, and a department store. In such the retail shops, an article is displayed on the display shelf, and an inventory tag corresponding to the article is set to the display shelf. The purpose of the inventory tag is to give information about a price of the article and so on to customers.
In recent years, an electric inventory tag has been developed as the inventory tag (see Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-099888). The electric inventory tag is, for example, formed with a liquid crystal panel, an organic EL panel, and so on (see Paragraph [0008] of Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-099888, for example).
A principal application of the display shelf used in the retail shop for displaying an article is to give price information of the article displayed on the display shelf and so on to customers by using the inventory tag or the electric inventory tag. Further, a method known as POP advertisement (Point Of Purchase) for drawing an attention of the customers for the article displayed on the display shelf and for inducing the customer to buy more articles has been conventionally widely adopted.
In Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-099888, a display shelf (a showcase in this publication) providing a projector and a screen on a ceiling of the display shelf is disclosed. By adopting such technique, it is possible to enhance a displaying effect for the article displayed on the display shelf by transmitting and projecting a display image luminous flux on the screen without having a POP advertisement printed on a recording medium such as paper (see Paragraph [0018] of Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-099888).
It is difficult for the inventory tag disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-099888 to have an information display area wide. A main reason for this is a price is expensive. Another reason is a low production yield of the liquid crystal display or the organic EL panel. Also, there is a description in Japanese Laid-Open publication 2005-099888 that a plurality of thin-model display devices are connected laterally to form a landscape display (see FIG. 8); however, in this case, a joint should be made between the thin-model display devices. Therefore, it is difficult to display a natural, beautiful image on the screen near the joint area.
Also, because the electric tag has the difficulty in having a wide area for displaying information, the information displayed in the area is limited to price information of corresponding article, and so on. Therefore, it is difficult for the electric inventory tag to have a function of the POP advertisement.
The object of the invention is to provide a display shelf and a display shelf system capable of having a wide display information area corresponding to an article to be displayed.